PLATO For other uses , see PLATO ( disambiguation ) . PLATO was one of the first generalized Computer assisted instruction systems , originally built by the University of Illinois ( U of I ) and later taken over by Control Data Corporation ( CDC ) , who provided the machines it ran on . PLATO ran for many years at the U of I , but CDC President William Norris ' plans to make it a major force in the computing world and a keystone of corporate social responsibility failed . Although the project was economically a failure and supplanted by other technologies when it was finally turned off in the 1990s , PLATO nevertheless pioneered key concepts such as online forums and message boards , online testing , email , chat rooms , picture languages , instant messaging , remote screen sharing , and multiplayer online games . The name PLATO was chosen for its connection to teaching and only later on was an apronym created around it . It was said that PLATO stood for Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operations but this was later disavowed and PLATO , despite usually being spelled in all caps , officially stood for nothing . Background Prior to the 1944 G.I. Bill , which provided free college education to returning World War II veterans , higher education was limited to a minority of the U.S. population . The trend towards much larger enrollment in higher education was clear by the early 1950s , and the problem of providing for an influx of new students was a serious concern . A number of people proposed that if the computer could increase the capabilities of the factory via automation , then surely it could do the same for education . In 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I , and the United States suddenly felt a collective sense of educational inferiority . The result was massive spending on science and engineering education ; computer-based education along with it . In 1958 the US Air Force 's Office of Scientific Research held a conference on the topic at the University of Pennsylvania , and a number of groups—notably IBM —presented studies on the topic . PLATO 's birth Chalmers Sherwin , a physicist at the University of Illinois , suggested a computerized learning system to William Everett , Dean of the College of Engineering . Everett recommended that Daniel Alpert , another physicist , convene a meeting on the topic that included engineers , educators , mathematicians , and psychologists . After several weeks of meetings the group was unable to suggest a single design for such a system . Alpert was unhappy with the results , but before announcing their failure he mentioned the meetings to a lab assistant , Donald Bitzer . Bitzer claimed that he had already been thinking about the problem , and suggested that he could build a demonstration system . Bitzer , regarded as the `` father of PLATO '' , succeeded largely due to his rejection of `` modern '' educational thinking . Returning to a basic drill-based system , his team improved on existing systems by allowing students to bypass lessons they already understood . Their first system , PLATO I first ran on the locally-built ILLIAC I computer in 1960 . It included a TV for display and a special keyboard to navigate the system 's menus . In 1961 they introduced PLATO II , which ran two users at once . Convinced of the value of the project , the PLATO system entered a major redesign between 1963 and 1969 . The new PLATO III allowed `` anyone '' to design new lesson modules using their TUTOR programming language , conceived one night in the summer of 1967 by biology grad student Paul Tenczar . Built on a CDC 1604 which had been given to them for free by William Norris , PLATO III could run up to 20 lessons at once , and was used by a number of local facilities in Champaign-Urbana that could be attached to the system with their custom terminals . NSF involvement PLATO I , II and III had been funded by small grants from a combined Army-Navy-Air Force funding pool , but by the time PLATO III was in operation everyone involved was convinced it was worthwhile to scale up the project . Accordingly , in 1967 the National Science Foundation granted the team steady funding , allowing Bitzer to set up the Computer-based Education Research Laboratory ( CERL ) at the university . In 1972 a new system named PLATO IV was ready for operation . The PLATO IV terminal was a major innovation . It included Bitzer 's orange plasma display invention which incorporated both memory and bitmapped graphics into one display . This plasma display included fast vector line drawing capability and ran at 1260 baud , rendering 60 lines or 180 characters per second . The characters were computer-drawn on a 512x512 grid , and the users could provide their own characters to support rudimentary raster graphics . Compressed air powered a piston-driven microfiche image selector that permitted colored images to be projected on the back of the screen under program control . The PLATO IV display also included a 16-by-16 grid infrared touch panel allowing students to answer questions by touching anywhere on the screen . In addition , the Gooch Synthetic Woodwind , or `` Gooch Box '' ( named after inventor Sherwin Gooch ) as it was called was a peripheral that offered 4 voice music synthesis to provide sound in PLATO courseware . This was later supplanted by the Gooch Cybernetic Synthesizer , which had 16 voices that could be programmed individually or combined to make more complex sounds . This allowed for what today is known as multimedia experiences . In the case of GSW , a PLATO-compatible music language was developed , as well as a compiler for this language , two music text editors , a filing system for music binaries , programs to play the music binaries in real time , and many debugging and compositional aids . A number of interactive compositional programs have also been written . It was also possible to connect the terminal to peripheral devices . The goal of this system was to provide tools for music educators to use in the development of instructional materials , which might possibly include music dictation drills , automatically graded keyboard performances , envelope and timbre ear-training , interactive examples or labs in musical acoustics , and composition and theory exercises with immediate feedback . With the advent of microprocessor technology , new PLATO terminals were developed to be less expensive and more flexible than the PLATO IV terminals . The Intel 8080 microprocessors in PLATO V terminals made them capable of executing programs locally , much like today 's Java applets and ActiveX controls , and allowed small software modules to be downloaded into the terminal to augment to the PLATO courseware with rich animation and other sophisticated capabilities that were not available otherwise using a traditional terminal-based approach . Early in 1972 , researchers from Xerox PARC were given a tour of the PLATO system at the University of Illinois . At this time they were shown parts of the system such as the Show Display application generator for pictures on PLATO ( later translated into a `` Doodle '' program at PARC ) , and the Charset Editor for `` painting '' new characters , and the Term Talk and Monitor Mode communications program . Many of the new technologies they saw were adopted and improved upon when these researchers returned to Palo Alto , CA . A standard keyboard for a PLATO IV terminal , circa 1976 . By 1975 the PLATO System served almost 150 locations from a donated CDC Cyber 73 , including not only the users of the PLATO III system , but a number of grammar schools , high schools , colleges and universities , and military installations . PLATO IV offered text , graphics and animation as intrinsic components of courseware content , and included a shared-memory construct ( `` common '' variables ) that allowed TUTOR programs to send data between various users . This latter construct was used both for chat-type programs , as well as the first multi-user flight simulator . With the introduction of PLATO IV , Bitzer declared general success , claiming that the goal of generalized computer instruction was now available to all . However the terminals were very expensive ( about $ 12 , 000 ) , so as a generalized system PLATO would likely need to be scaled down for cost reasons alone . The CDC years As PLATO IV reached production quality , William Norris became increasingly interested in it as a potential product . His interest was two-fold . From a strict business perspective , he was evolving Control Data into a service-based company instead of a hardware one , and was increasingly convinced that computer-based education would become a major market in the future . At the same time , Norris was upset by the unrest of the late 1960s , and felt that much of it was due to social inequalities that needed to be addressed . PLATO offered a solution by providing higher education to segments of the population that would otherwise never be able to afford university . Norris provided CERL with machines on which to develop their system in the late 1960s . In 1971 he set up a new division within CDC to develop PLATO `` courseware '' , and eventually many of CDC 's own initial training and technical manuals ran on it . In 1974 PLATO was running on in-house machines at CDC headquarters in Minneapolis , and in 1976 they purchased the commercial rights in exchange for a new CDC Cyber machine . CDC announced the acquisition soon after , claiming that by 1985 50% of the company 's income would be related to PLATO services . Through the 1970s CDC tirelessly promoted PLATO , both as a commercial tool and one for re-training unemployed workers in new fields . Norris refused to give up on the system , and invested in several non-mainstream courses , including a crop-information system for farmers , and various courses for inner-city youth . CDC even went as far as to place PLATO terminals in some shareholder 's houses , to demonstrate the concept of the system . In the early 1980s CDC started heavily advertising the service , apparently due to increasing internal dissent over the now $ 600 million project , taking out print and even radio ads promoting it as a general tool . The Minneapolis Tribune was unconvinced by their ad copy and started an investigation of the claims . In the end they concluded that while it was not proven to be a better education system , everyone using it nevertheless enjoyed it at least . An official evaluation by an external testing agency ended with roughly the same conclusions , suggesting that everyone enjoyed using it , but it was essentially equal to an average human teacher in terms of student advancement . Of course a computerized system equal to a human should have been a major achievement , the very concept that the early pioneers in CBT were aiming for . A computer could serve all the students in a school for the cost of maintaining it , and would n't go on strike . However CDC charged $ 50 an hour for access to their data center , in order to recoup some of their development costs , making it considerably more expensive than a human on a per-student basis . PLATO was therefore a failure in any real sense , although it did find some use in large companies and government agencies willing to invest in the technology . An attempt to mass-market the PLATO system was introduced in 1980 as Micro-PLATO , which ran the basic TUTOR system on a CDC `` Viking-721 '' terminal and various home computers . Versions were built for the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A , Atari 8-bit family , Zenith Z-100 and ( later ) Radio Shack TRS-80 & IBM PC . Micro-PLATO could be used stand-alone for normal courses , or could connect to a CDC data center for multiuser programs . To make the latter affordable , CDC introduced the Homelink service for $ 5 an hour . In 1986 Norris stepped down as CEO , and the PLATO service was slowly killed off . He tirelessly supported it to the end , announcing that it would be only a few years before it represented a major source of income for CDC as late as 1984 . Nevertheless he later claimed that Micro-PLATO was one of the reasons PLATO got off-track . They had started on the TI-99/4A , but then TI pulled the plug and they moved to other systems like the Atari , who soon did the same . He felt that it was a waste of time anyway , as the system 's value was in its online nature , which Micro-PLATO lacked ( at least to start ) . Bitzer was more forthright about CDC 's failure , blaming their corporate culture for the problems . He noted that development of the courseware was averaging $ 300 , 000 per delivery hour , many times what the CERL was paying for similar products . This meant that CDC had to charge high prices in order to recoup their costs , prices that made the system unattractive . The reason , he suggested , for these high prices was that CDC had set up a division that had to keep itself profitable via courseware development , forcing them to raise the prices in order to keep their headcount up during slow periods . PLATO in South Africa During the period when CDC was marketing PLATO , the system began to be used internationally . South Africa was one of the biggest users of PLATO in the early 1980s . ESCOM , the South African electrical power company , had a large CDC mainframe at Megawatt Park in the northwest suburbs of Johannesburg . Mainly this computer was used for management and data processing tasks related to power generation and distribution , but it also ran the PLATO software . The largest PLATO installation in South Africa during the early 1980s was at the University of the Western Cape , which served a `` coloured '' population , and at one time had hundreds of PLATO IV terminals all connected by leased data lines back to Johannesburg . There were several other installations at educational institutions in South Africa , among them Madadeni College in the Madadeni township just outside of Newcastle . This was perhaps the most unusual PLATO installation anywhere . Madadeni had about 1 , 000 students , all of them black and 99.5% of Zulu ancestry . The college was one of 10 teacher preparation institutions in kwaZulu , most of them much smaller . In many ways Madadeni was very primitive . None of the classrooms had electricity and there was only one telephone for the whole college , which one had to crank for several minutes before an operator might come on the line . So an air-conditioned , carpeted room with 16 computer terminals was a stark contrast to the rest of the college . At times the only way a person could communicate with the outside world was through PLATO term-talk . For many of the Madadeni students , most of whom came from very rural areas , the PLATO terminal was the first time they encountered any kind of electronic technology. ( Many of the first year students had never seen a flush toilet before. ) There initially was skepticism that these technologically-illiterate students could effectively use PLATO , but those concerns were not borne out . Within an hour or less most students were using the system proficiently , mostly to learn math and science skills , although a lesson that taught keyboarding skills was one of the most popular . A few students even used on-line resources to learn TUTOR , the PLATO programming language , and a few wrote lessons on the system in the Zulu language . PLATO was also used fairly extensively in South Africa for industrial training . ESCOM successfully used PLM ( PLATO learning management ) and simulations to train power plant operators , South African Airways ( SAA ) used PLATO simulations for cabin attendant training , and there were a number of other large companies as well that were exploring the use of PLATO . The South African subsidiary of CDC invested heavily in the development of an entire secondary school curriculum ( SASSC ) on PLATO , but unfortunately as the curriculum was nearing the final stages of completion , CDC began to falter in South Africa—partly because of financial problems back home , partly because of growing opposition in the United States to doing business in South Africa , and partly due to the rapidly evolving microcomputer , a paradigm shift that CDC failed to recognize . The PLATO Online Community Although PLATO was designed for computer-based education , many consider its most enduring legacy to be the online community spawned by its communication features . PLATO Notes , introduced in 1973 , was among the world 's first online message boards , and years later became the direct progenitor of Lotus Notes . By 1976 , PLATO had sprouted a variety of novel tools for online communication , including Personal Notes ( email ) , Talkomatic ( chat rooms ) , and Term-Talk ( instant messaging and remote screen sharing ) . PLATO 's architecture also made it an ideal platform for online gaming . Many extremely popular games were developed on PLATO during the 1970s and 1980s , such as Empire ( a massively multiplayer game based on Star Trek ) , Airfight ( a precursor to Microsoft Flight Simulator ) , the original Freecell , and several `` dungeons and dragons '' games , including dnd and MMORPG Moria , that presaged MUDs and MOOs as well as popular shoot-em-up games like Doom and Quake . Avatar , PLATO 's most popular game , is one of the world 's first MUDs and has over 1 million hours of use . These communication tools and games formed the basis for a thriving online community of thousands of PLATO users , which lasted for well over twenty years . The history of this community has been documented in much greater detail in David Woolley 's article `` PLATO : The Emergence of Online Community . `` In August of 2004 , a version of PLATO ( see Cyber1.org ) from the 1980-1985 period was resurrected online , and word of its reincarnation spread rapidly . Within 6 months , by word of mouth alone , more than 500 former users had signed up to use the system . Many of the students who used PLATO in the 1970s and 1980s felt a special social bond with the community of users who came together using the powerful communications tools ( talk programs , records systems and notes files ) on PLATO . The original PLATO IV system had more than 12 , 000 contact hours of courseware , much of it developed by college professors for higher education . The knowledge embedded in this computer system is immense , even today . Testing Testing software developed on PLATO was deployed as the first large-scale computer-based testing system , and turned out to be the most financially viable component of the system . The NASD , private-sector regulator of the US securities markets , began using PLATO for securities license testing in the 1970s . The original testing system was built by Control Data analysts Michael Stein , E. Clarke Porter and PLATO veteran Jim Ghesquiere in cooperation with NASD executive Frank McAuliffe using the full power of the PLATO network to provide the first `` on-demand '' proctored commercial testing service at over a hundred locations in the United States . The testing business grew slowly and was ultimately spun off from Control Data Corporation as Drake Training and Technologies in 1990 . Applying many of the PLATO concepts used in the late 1970s , E. Clarke Porter led the Drake Training and Technologies testing business ( today Thomson Prometric ) in partnership with Novell , Inc. away from the mainframe model to a LAN-based client server architecture and changed the business model to deploy proctored testing at thousands of independent training organizations on a global scale . With the advent of a pervasive global network of testing centers and IT certification programs sponsored by , among others , Novell and Microsoft , the online testing business exploded . Today 's market leader , Thomson Prometric , is the direct descendant of the PLATO testing system ; the other major company in the market , Pearson VUE , was founded by PLATO/Prometric veterans E. Clarke Porter , Steve Nordberg and Kirk Lundeen in 1994 . VUE improved on the business model by being one of the first commercial companies to rely on the Internet as a critical busienss service and by developing self-service test registration . The computer-based testing business has continued to grow , adding professional licensure and educational testing as important business segments . Prometric and VUE among other descendants of the PLATO system validate William Norris ' vision of the profitable use of computers in education . A number of smaller testing-related companies also evolved from the PLATO system . One of the few survivors of that group is The Examiner Corporation . Dr. Stanley Trollip ( formerly of the University of Illinois Aviation Research Lab ) and Gary Brown ( formerly of Control Data ) developed the prototype of The Examiner System in 1984 . Other versions CDC eventually sold the `` PLATO '' trademark and some courseware marketing segment rights to the newly-formed The Roach Organization in 1989 . In 2000 TRO changed their name to PLATO Learning and continue to sell and service PLATO courseware running on PC's . CDC continued development of the basic system under the name CYBIS ( CYber-Based Instructional System ) after selling the name to Roach , in order to service their commercial and government customers . The University of Illinois also continued development of PLATO , eventually setting up a commercial on-line service called NovaNET in partnership with University Communications , Inc . CERL was closed in 1994 , with the maintenance of the PLATO code passing to UCI. UCI was later renamed NovaNET Learning , which was bought by National Computer Systems . Shortly after that , NCS was bought by Pearson , and after several name changes now operates as Pearson Digital Learning . CDC , meanwhile , sold off their mainframe CYBIS business to University Online , which was a descendant of IMSATT. UOL was later renamed to VCampus . At the end of 2005 , one remaining CDC CYBER mainframe system was still running at the FAA . VCampus granted non-commercial rights to run CYBIS courseware to Cyber1 , operating on a CYBER emulator running NOS , CDC 's operating system . This followed limited rights to run NOS being granted by Syntegra ( BT ) , which had inherited the remainder of CDC 's mainframe business . Cyber1 offers free access to the system , which contains over 16 , 000 of the original lessons , in an attempt to preserve the original PLATO communities that grew up at CERL and on CDC systems in the 1980's . PLATO courseware was fairly extensive , covering a full range of high-school and college courses , as well as topics such as reading skills , family planning , Lamaze training and home budgeting . In addition , authors at the School of Basic Medical Sciences at the University of Illinois devised a large number of basic science lessons and a self-testing system for first year students.However the most popular `` courseware '' remained their multi-user games and computer role playing games such as dnd , although it appears CDC was uninterested in this market . As the value of a CDC-based solution disappeared in the 1980s , interested educators ported the engine first to the IBM PC , and later to web -based systems . Today , however , even the web-based versions seem to have disappeared . Innovation Plasma display , circa 1964 , by Donald Bitzer for PLATO IV Touch Panel , circa 1964 , by Donald Bitzer for PLATO IV Show Display Mode , a graphics application generator for TUTOR software , precursor to Apple 's QuickDraw picture language editor . Charset Editor , an early version of MacPaint for drawing bitmapped pictures stored in downloadable fonts . Airfight , circa 1972 , a 3-D flight simulator written for PLATO by Brand Fortner ; this probably inspired UIUC student Bruce Artwick to start subLOGIC which was acquired and later became Microsoft Flight Simulator . Empire , a 30 person multi-player inter-terminal 2-D real-time space simulation , circa 1974 . Monitor Mode on PLATO , circa 1975 , used by instructors to help students , precursor of Timbuktu screen-sharing software . Notes , the first general-purpose computer message board , and precursor to Unix Newsgroups , Digital DECnotes and Lotus Notes , 1973 . Talkomatic , a 6-person real-time chat room ( text-based ) , precursor to Instant Messaging Conferences , 1974 Term-Talk , precursor to instant messaging , circa 1974 dnd , 1974-1975 , a dungeon crawl game that included the first video game boss . Build-Up , 1976 by Bruce Wallace , based on JG Ballard story , the first 3-D walkthru maze game . The maze itself was also 3-D , having holes in the floor and ceiling . Panther , circa 1975 by John Haefeli , a 3-D tank simulation that spawned Atari 's Battlezone game . Think15 , circa 1977 , 2-D outdoor wilderness quest simulation , like Trek with monsters , trees , treasures . Avatar , circa 1978 , a 2.5-D graphical Multi-User Dungeon ( MUD ) , a precursor to EverQuest . Freecell , circa 1978 by Paul Alfille , which probably spawned the Windows version . Mahjong solitaire , 1981 by Brodie Lockard , and was popularised in 1986 by Activision as Shanghai . External links PLATO : The Emergence of Online Community by David R. Woolley PLATO People , A History Book Research Project by Brian L. Dear PLATO : From Computer-Based Education to Corporate Social Responsibility by Elisabeth Van Meer PLATO RISING - Online learning for Atarians by David & Sandy Small Cyber1.org : An online preservation of the PLATO system The History of Computer Gaming Part 5 - PLATO Ai n't Just Greek by Marty `` Retro Rogue '' Goldberg Yes Computers can Revolutionize Education by Arthur Darak from the Sept/Oct 1977 issue of Consumer Digest References ^ Sherwin Gooch ( 1978-03 ) . PLATO Music Systems . Retrieved on 2006-04-13 . Categories : TI-99/4A In other languages : Español http : //eric.ed.gov : 80/ERICWebPortal/Home.portal ? _nfpb=true & ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_1=%22Gooch+Sherwin%22 & ERICExtSearch_Operator_1=OR & ERICExtSearch_SearchType_1=au & _pageLabel=RecordDetails & objectId=0900000b80102360 & accno=ED161421 Sherwin Gooch PLATO Music Systems 1978-03 2006-04-13 